Digital Social Hour - Making Millions Off YouTube Ads, 60th Fastest Growing Company & Masterminds | Aleric Heck DSH #319

Episode Date: February 27, 2024

Aleric Heck comes on the podcast to discuss YouTube Ads. APPLY TO BE ON THE PODCAST: https://forms.gle/qXvENTeurx7Xn8Ci9 BUSINESS INQUIRIES/SPONSORS: [e-mail] SPONSORS: Opus Pro: https://www.opus.pro/?via=DSH Deposyt Payment Processing: https://www.deposyt.com/seankellyFactor: Factor: Use code "DSH50" for 50% off your order at https://www.factormeals.com/dsh50 Digital Social Hour works with participants in sponsored media and stays compliant with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulations regarding sponsored media. #ad LISTEN ON: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/digital-social-hour/id1676846015 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5Jn7LXarRlI8Hc0GtTn759 Sean Kelly Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmikekelly/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

America, we are endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. By honoring your sacred vocation of business, you impact your family, your friends, and your community. At Grand Canyon University, our MBA degree program is 100% online, with emphases in business analytics and finance to help you reach your goals. Find your purpose at GCU. Private. Christian. Affordable. Visit gcu.edu. I remember we had one app that we promoted

and we got them over 100,000 users for their app. Kind of pre-revenue, so... You know, that's when I really learned the importance not just of hitting those KPIs, but also, you know, the return on ad spend, actually working with the businesses to figure out what is your actual return going to be? And then how can we turn this into a flywheel so it keeps producing revenue for you? Wherever you guys are watching this show, I would truly appreciate it if you follow or subscribe. It helps a lot with the algorithm.

It helps us get bigger and better guests and it helps us grow the team. Truly means a lot. Thank you guys for supporting, and here's the episode. All right, guys, we are back. We're talking YouTube today. YouTube ads with one of the best in the game, I'd say. Alaric Heck today. How's it going, man? Going great. I'm excited to be here. Yeah, man. So how long you been doing YouTube ads for? So I've been doing YouTube ads for eight years, but I've been on YouTube for over 14 years. It's that old? Yeah, I started out back in 2009. I started pretty young too.

I was 12 at the time, created a YouTube channel, app find, skilled to about half a million subscribers, like teaching people how to use their iPhone, tech tutorials. I've actually got one of the top videos on like how to use your iPhone. Wow. iPhone Complete Beginner's Guide.

And so I kind of built that up over time. And that's when I saw that YouTube was such a powerful platform, especially for marketing. And so about eight years ago, I was in college at the time, and I had the YouTube channel that was generating some good revenue. But I knew I wanted to do something a little bit more. And so one day, one of the apps that I was promoting, they came to me and they said, hey, can we take this video that you made? So I just did a sponsored video on the channel. They got a bunch of downloads for their app.

They said, can we take this video and run that as an ad? Or can we take this video and use it to get more people to watch or to download the app? And I said, well, what if we take this video and run it as an ad? They were a little skeptical. So they were actually coming to me and saying, how can we get more downloads? And I said, well, what if we run the video as an ad?

And that's what we did. And we took that video, and we got thousands more downloads for their app. Wow. So they were blown away. They called me up. They say, hey, Alrick, we want you to drop out of college, fly out here to Silicon Valley, join our team.

You can run ads for our app. And they had a bunch of different apps that they represented. And I turned it down and said, you know what? I want to do this myself. And that's when I created Ad Outreach eight years ago and started really originally with YouTube ads for mobile apps. And then I expanded into different businesses, coaches, consultants, course creators, experts, those types of businesses. Nice. Yeah. Because the margins on apps are probably pretty low, right? Yeah. Especially you have some of the apps that were free apps. Like I remember we had one app that we promoted and we got them over a hundred thousand users for their app. And I'm like, hey, you know, this is great. Can we keep scaling?

We hit all those benchmarks and I remember they turned to me and said, well, we're kind of pre-revenue so we're not actually, the users are great and there were daily active users coming in but they weren't making any money and that was actually my wake-up call

when I realized, wait a second, we did exactly what they wanted us to do. We got their app over 100,000 downloads, and we've done millions for different apps. But what I realized is that with a free app, it's so different than if you're selling something, if you have a course, or you have some type of consulting product or service, or something that's a little bit more high ticket. It's just the margins are going to be much better, and then you can keep scaling. That's when I really learned

the importance not just of hitting those KPIs, but also, you know, the return on ad spend being like the core metric, like actually working with the businesses to figure out what is your actual return going to be? And then how can we turn this into a flywheel so it keeps producing revenue for you? Yeah.

So I've heard YouTube's a tough egg to crack in terms of running ads, but I've heard once you do, it's really insane. Is that true? Yeah. So there's a barrier of entry that other platforms like Facebook don't have. So that's exactly the case that a lot of people find is they try to go on YouTube and they say, well, it's not the same as Facebook. It's not as quick to put something up on Facebook. You could put up an image, kind of a more simple video. You might get a little bit of traction. That said, on Facebook, as we know, you might get traction early on,

but it's a little bit more challenging to scale because it's all interruption-based. People are scrolling on Facebook. You've got to kind of interrupt them. The quality might not be quite there as much as YouTube. On YouTube, it's more of an intent-based platform. People are going on YouTube to learn. They're looking up, you know, how do I actually solve this problem? How do I do this thing?

And so if you can reach them at that time with a video, when they have intent, you can reach the right person at the right time with the right message that gets them to convert. Shout out to Another Byte, hosted by John Dick, Jareen Munro, Ariel Boswell, and it is on the HubSpot Network, the number one network for business professionals. They basically do a recap of Shark Tank episodes. They cover their favorite episodes. They interview entrepreneurs that pitch. They give their thoughts, their own ideas,

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Another bite. Peace. And so that's what we do with YouTube. And the reason that it's a higher barrier of entry is people just kind of put up a simple video or they don't actually target it in front of the right people the right way. And so it's not as easy to start right off the bat. That's actually where I've really honed my expertise is in crafting the perfect YouTube ad. It has a hook. It draws people in, it educates, it provides value. It has a call to action, gets people to take action. And then targeting that ad directly in front of the right people on YouTube. That's kind of the key. And it's the thing that I think a lot of people get wrong is what video to create and then how to

reach the right people. Yeah. Yeah. There's certain YouTube ads I think a lot of people get wrong is what video to create and then how to reach the right people. Yeah. Yeah. There's certain YouTube ads I see every day. I'm like, that guy has to be shitting it. Yeah. Right now I get Jeremy Lee Minor. I get that ad every day.

I used to get Tai Lopez, of course, Cardone, Tony Robbins when he did that big webinar. I feel like YouTube is, I mean, they have so many users. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. I mean, you must have been part of some really big campaigns. Yeah, yeah, some pretty big ones. You've probably seen like Cole, Gordon. Oh, I get that all the time.

Yeah, we helped him back in the day get all his YouTube ads up and running. So there's a lot of really great people that are just seeing a lot of success on the YouTube side. And the way to do it is really making sure that you're reaching people at the exact kind of time that they're reaching people at the exact kind of time that they're looking to learn. On Facebook and other platforms, we're interruption-based, right? And so people are scrolling by. On YouTube, if we can reach people when they're watching videos and they're looking to potentially learn a topic or a skill, maybe they've searched something

recently on YouTube or Google, you can target them using a custom intent based on recent searches. Then you can reach them at the right time and also with a video that's going to provide value, get them excited, get them watching. And because it's already a video they're watching, let's say you're sending them to a training, they're much more likely to actually consume that training and then go through the rest of the funnel because they're already in kind of a video consumption mode. Yeah, I feel like the targeting is probably more precise than Facebook, right? Yeah. I mean, Google has millions of data points, and that's the thing that people don't realize is it's not just YouTube that they have all the data. They have all your Google searches.

They have Google Analytics, which is installed on 55.49% of all websites has Google Analytics installed. So they're tracking all the data over half the websites that people visit. Wow. They also have Google Chrome as well. So anybody who's visiting any site on Google Chrome, it's in the terms and conditions. They're tracking all that information.

And this is another one that really gets people, Gmail. There's a reason it's free, right? It's because they're tracking all that data. Where do all your receipts go? They go back to Gmail. They know and they can build a profile. What do you like to buy? What are you interested in? What do you sign up to? And then all of that data can be used when you go and actually target people with Google and YouTube ads. That's insane. When it comes to making the videos for the ads, how hard is that process? So that's the thing that if people

don't know the right process, it can take a little bit of time. That's something that you can speed up by having the right framework. So the way that it works is we found, because we've written now thousands of YouTube ad scripts for our clients, we found that there's a winning formula. There's a hook that draws people in. There's an educate section where we're providing value and then a call to action. The big thing that people miss is really providing that value. Because in order to get an ad that's really going to connect with your ideal client, you want to provide some type of value, demonstrate your expertise, showcase the product or service or coaching, consulting, whatever it happens to be, and showcase that inside of the ad. And then people get a little bit of a taste,

and then they're going to want to actually go and sign up and take action. That's what Jeremy does in his ads. I'm like, wait, why is he teaching right now? This is an ad, but that makes a lot of sense now. Exactly. And then, especially if you're sending people to a training and then the training is going to provide

a little bit more value, and then you're getting people to get on a phone call or whatever that next step is, then that's going to provide more value, maybe customize it to that person. And then that's where the high ticket offer will be made. And so that's a really good way to kind of bring people through a funnel, starting with value and then almost having these breadcrumbs that lead them along the way to the desired results of, you know, becoming a client or the purchase or whatever happens.

Yeah, that's cool. Now I know your agency was the 60th fastest growing company in the world last year. Yeah. So yeah, exactly. 2022. Yes. That's insane. Yeah. So is that based off revenue or how do they calculate? So that's based off of revenue. So Inc goes in and they look at all your books. Like they, they literally go through and with a fine tooth comb and look at like all the details. So that's like certifiable, like, you know, full results. We scaled 6,052% in that three-year period leading up to 2022. So yeah, 60X. I'm trying to do that in my head. That's crazy.

Yeah, so we grew pretty fast. And we practiced the way we preach. Just like YouTube ads, that's what we use to really ramp up. And YouTube ads on the front end, that brings everybody in. We also have a strategy called omnipresent retargeting. So once we bring people in with YouTube, we want to hit them everywhere. Because once they're a lead, you know, we know they're interested. So we want to pop up not just on YouTube, but on Facebook, Google search, you know, LinkedIn, all the different platforms, but YouTube pulls people in. Then we retarget people everywhere.

And it's actually kind of interesting because a lot of people scale up, you know, organically, or they do a lot of different things or different promotions. And it's only now that I'm starting to, you know, podcasts like this. And, you know, I've got, I'm growing the organic YouTube channel, all those different things. But YouTube ads really was the driver of that growth. And so it's always good when you can practice what you preach. So yeah, no, that's, that's the first time I look for when I'm hiring anyone, honestly.

Yeah. Like, are you doing what you're coaching or teaching? Yeah. Because there's certain coaches that make more off the coaching than what they're doing. Yeah. And that to me is if the numbers are too skewed, it's a red flag. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah.

In terms of AI, are you using that anywhere in the company right now? Yeah, so I actually created a software called Keyword Search. So keywordsearch.com, and this is an AI ad targeting software. I've spent the last three years developing it. So it didn't have AI at the very beginning. So originally what it was, was a software that allows you to find all the different keywords that people are searching on YouTube or on Google, and then you can go and target that with YouTube ads.

Over the last year, once AI came out, it used to be a little bit more of a manual process, even though it sped up when people used to do. We actually automated the whole thing with AI. So people go on to keywordsearch.com. They just type in, here's my business. Here's my URL. We'll scrape the whole URL. Here's some details about my product or service. They click generate and it'll give them all of the different keywords that people might be looking up on YouTube, on Google, URLs that you could potentially target, which I'll get to in a second, because that's a really cool type of targeting on YouTube. And then also potential channels they might be watching,

different interests and in-market audiences you can sync with Google. And then you just click which ones you want, and then in one click can sync it over to Google Ads. Wow. Yeah. And so that's like a software. That is powerful. I just found one yesterday. I forget the name, but you type in anyone's name, it pulls up all the most commonly searched Google questions. And I feel like as a podcast host, that's good to know because now I can ask some of these and see what people are interested in. Exactly. Exactly. And so those types of tools, like AI tools are so powerful. And I think that that's the future is just figuring out how to augment it with AI. I remember having somebody on my team say, hey, Alrick, why do we develop like AI software? Because this is a lot of what we're going in and doing manually. It's

like, are we trying to replace that? It's like, well, honestly, if we don't try to disrupt ourselves, somebody else will. So I want to build the best AI tool to do what I currently do manually, because then that's part of what I'm building. And then I can use that with my team, and I can also have our clients use that and have people go and use that. And then that allows me to almost disrupt myself with AI. And I think that's something that really people should look at is how can you take what you do and figure out how to make AI to make it better? Because if you don't, somebody else will do it for you and they could potentially walk away with that. So you want to be the creator of the AI that disrupts things that you're doing yourself.

Right, it's going to happen regardless, right? Exactly. It's already here. Exactly. And it's an interesting debate, because I was at a conference, like an intimate one the other week, and it was a bunch of business owners,

and they were actually worried about AI. They were saying that they have a lot of family-type businesses, I guess, and they don't want to replace their employees. So it's interesting to hear both sides, but I feel like it is going to take over a lot of jobs-type businesses, I guess, and they don't want to replace their employees. So it's interesting to hear both sides, but I feel like it is going to take over a lot of jobs. Yeah, it's crazy to see what's happening right now. And I think that that's the thing is, it's looking at how can we use AI to 10x our productivity.

And I think that that's the way that I really look at it, is I want to see, okay, instead of having to have it replace potential people that we have on the team, how can we amplify people that we have on the team so that we turn them into that, you know, 10 X, uh, you know, copywriter or that 10 X, uh, ad strategist or media buyer. Um, and I've heard people talk about in software, like the 10 X, you know, software developer, right? So how can we do this to actually just create more output as opposed to, you know, the way I look at it, because some people look at it as, oh, if this is how much we want to create and then AI allows us to bridge that gap, well, maybe we don't need as many people. The way I look at it is if we're here and AI allows us to create more, I'm

not going to cut back to keep doing the same. I want to do that to, you know, 10X what I'm doing and actually grow, you actually grow my ability to go and serve clients and do more with the people that we have and super powering them with AI, with a software like keyword search or a software like you mentioned that comes up with questions or copywriting software. That way we can super power them. I like that perspective a lot more because people try to pit the two against each other all the time. But that I like a lot. You mentioned targeting websites earlier. Yes.

How do you do that? So this is a really, really powerful method to target people on YouTube that not a lot of people know about, which is using URL affinity audiences. This allows you to build what's called a URL affinity audience as an audience segment inside of Google based on websites that people have gone to or similar sites. So what you can do is you can go in and target people who have gone to certain websites. So let's say people that have gone to like ClickFunnels or people have gone to, you know, a webinar jam or these different things that maybe we know they might be an ideal client for us because they use software that illustrates that they might be an online business. And so what I can do is target people that have been to those sites.

But it gets a layer deeper. Imagine targeting your competitor's website. So you just put in your competitor's URLs into this URL affinity audience, and you can target people based on that, people who have gone to those sites or similar sites with your YouTube ads. Dude, we got to talk because I have networking events, and I'm always interested in getting people. Easiest way to do that is to get people that go to other events to

come to yours because you already know they're interested in events. And I didn't know you could target those sites. Yeah. Yeah. That is interesting. Yeah. Can you target specific landing pages or just the overall site? So the overall site does work very well in terms of specific landing pages. It depends on how Google is able to grab it. So like I said, Google Analytics has 55% of all websites. And so they have a lot of data. They also know what people click on from Google search. That's all the data that they're pulling in. So what we found is specific landing pages that can work very well. But sometimes it just depends on the site. So for instance, there are some sites that

are like walled gardens, right, where they don't give Google that data. So linking to a specific Facebook group or something like that or a YouTube channel, in that way, obviously there's other ways to target that on Google and YouTube, but in that way it's not necessarily the same. But on a website that has Google Analytics installed and then you have a specific article or you have a specific page or specific landing page, then that's where you can put it into the URL audience. That makes sense. So for 2024, what type of products, campaigns, services

do you think are going to do well with YouTube and Google Ads? Yeah, so definitely coaching, consulting, high-ticket courses, expert-based businesses. Those are a lot of the clients that we have because it's really valuable because they can actually get themselves out there on YouTube. They're the face of the brand. They have that high ticket offering and they also have an expertise that they can showcase. Are you interested in coming on the digital social hour podcast as a guest? We'll click the application link below in the description of this video. We are always looking for cool stories, cool entrepreneurs to talk to you about

business and life. Click the application link below. And here's the episode, guys. On video, right? People are watching YouTube to learn. Let's say somebody is going and trying to figure out how to invest in real estate, right? They might be looking up how to invest in real estate on Google, on YouTube, or going to different websites using the URL affinity. What you can do is you can go in and target people that have looked that up or gone to those sites. And now on YouTube, next time they go on, it pops up with your ad where you pull them in, you've got the hook, you provide value. So now you're teaching them three big things that you might not know about investing in real estate is this, this, and this. And if you want to get my full training, click the link right here on the screen.

You'll be able to go and get it. And so when you do that, that's going to get people to actually go and raise their hand and say, oh, I want to go and sign up for that because they're actually interested. You're reaching the right people at the right time when they're in that learner's mindset. They're in video consumption mode. And so that's why coaching you know, coaching businesses, courses, expert businesses, those work really well. Also higher end services, online companies like software, those do well too. I think that, again, we have e-commerce and companies like that that perform in apps. It's just you got to know the margins. So, you know, having a business that

either has enough of a big brand that they're able to continue to sell or they have enough margins in that initial product. I think what's harder going into 2024 just in general is people that are operating on thinner margins, you know, kind of maybe white label drop shipping, things like that, usually those people will go wherever the traffic's cheapest. And it's not necessarily going to be the cheapest on YouTube, but it is going to be the highest quality. So for things like that, it might be over, but for things where you have a higher end offer or coaching, consulting courses or expert-based business, then you want the highest quality traffic. You want the best people that are actually going to have intent and look to buy. Yeah, especially for high ticket. You don't want to be wasting your time.

I've run Facebook lead ads and some of the leads are hilarious. Have you run those before? Yeah, exactly, exactly. Because I love to test all kinds of different ads and different platforms and different things. And so to a minor degree, we've ran some of those different things,

although I'm sure there's people that have ran a lot of that. But I think the thing is, you see if you've ever run Facebook lead ads or those those different things, although I'm sure there's people that have ran a lot of that. But I think the thing is, is you see, if you've ever run Facebook lead ads or those types of things, you'll see that the quality just isn't quite there because it's people that just click a button, they put in their details, and Facebook in that case is optimizing for that. So it's not necessarily optimizing for the people that are going to be the highest quality lead. So there's even better ways to advertise on platforms like Facebook than that. But then on YouTube, you're getting in front of people with that video, right?

They're already saying, okay, I want to watch this video. They're not skipping it. You're getting in front of them. You're demonstrating a little bit of that value. And you're reaching them at a time when they're actually consuming content. And it's more active versus passive. So Facebook, it might be passive. They might say, oh, that's interesting. I'm going to click it. YouTube, they're engaged.

They're watching something. That makes sense. Also on Facebook, the audio is off by default. So most of the video, even if you run a video, so image ads, people kind of scroll by that. But even if you have a video, they have to actually click into the video and unmute the video on Facebook for that to work. I didn't know that. Whereas on YouTube, or if you have a video, they have to actually click into the video and unmute the video on Facebook for that to work. I didn't know that. Whereas on YouTube, or if you're scrolling on Facebook, you've already watched a video with audio, then it'll autoplay the next video you watch. But if you're just scrolling, it will have mute until you unmute it. On YouTube, it's the exact opposite.

Most of the video views are with audio on. So if people are going on YouTube and they're watching a video, it's audio on by default. They're actually seeing you, hearing you, and they have to watch that five seconds. In the traditional YouTube ads, there's different types of ads, but in the traditional YouTube ads we're talking about, they're watching that five seconds and then they get to decide if they want to keep watching the video and take action. That makes sense. Is there certain KPIs, metrics, ROIs you aim for on campaigns? Yeah. So, and it is really always going to depend based on the individual, you know, business, what their goals are, what they're looking for. You know, we always really want to have our clients aim for, you know, higher than 1% click-through rate. And then obviously there's people that have much higher than that. But that's

kind of a good benchmark to initially look at. But obviously the big metric more than click-through rates, there's things you can look at like view rates, things like that. The biggest thing though is what is your cost per conversion? And then what is kind of your overall return on ad spend? And that is going to depend on the business. So, you know, kind of benchmarks at a higher level. A lot of our clients, they're kind of seeking at scale for maybe 4, 5x, 6x plus like ROAS if they have a high ticket offer. That's pretty high. Yeah. But typically that's their goal. That's typically their goal. And usually what we're seeing is in a high ticket offer, the 3 to 5x at scale is a reasonable area to get into when you're looking at overall revenue. It's a little bit

different than direct cash collected. So direct cash collected might be a little bit more in the one to three X range depending on your payment plans. So exactly. So it's always important to talk about the two different sides of if you're targeting the direct revenue or if you're targeting the cash collected ROAS. So what we like to look at is what's your overall revenue ROAS as kind of your North Star, but then also looking at what cash are you collecting today. And so typically with a lot of high-ticket offers, they want to make sure that they're profitable initially on day one, that somebody buys. Not day one that they see the ad, but that somebody buys.

So typically that's within a month window. So they want to be profitable within that month. And then from there, the better ROAS is made over those subsequent months as they cash collect any additional payment plans they have. Yeah. Makes total sense. Are you doing anything with newsletters right now? Yes.

So I actually have my own newsletter. It's the marketing minds newsletter. And we've got about like 97,000 people on that. Yeah. So I've grown that, which is cool. That's worth a lot of money, man.

Oh, thank you. Yeah. They're getting acquired right now. Oh really? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. that. I've grown that, which is cool. That's worth a lot of money, man. They're getting acquired right now. Oh, really? I have seen some of them get acquired and stuff like that. It's part of my overall brand and stuff. This is connected with me. I've actually thought about even launching a podcast

or something like that, too. That's something potentially on the horizon. I think that's a good bouncing point from like a newsletter for me dude yeah it's it's more than just the money it's just like the connections and the branding i'd say yeah like the roi is is tough the first year but once you get it going it's like a snowball yeah yeah that's awesome i you yeah you're you're i think like especially seeing that you know seeing seeing all this too i think you're you're convincing me to do a podcast this year. I mean, it's changed my life.

You saw it firsthand. I'm only a year in, but the connections I made, money's been decent, and just stuff I've learned, honestly, too. It's incredible how much you've grown over that period of time too, which is amazing. Consistency, I think. Same thing with you. You're probably running hundreds of ads a day.

I'm posting three times a day. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. All right running hundreds of ads a day. I'm posting three times a day. Yeah. Yeah. All right. We've covered a lot. Are you in any masterminds or conferences? Yeah.

So, well, I'm here at Traffic and Conversion Summit. So I'm going to be speaking there on YouTube ads, which is always great. I also am part of Founders Board and Genius Network. Oh, nice. I've heard great things about you. Oh, they're both fantastic. Really, Joe Polish with Genius Network and then also Founders Board,

Ryan, Roland, Richard, all those guys. Really amazing. And so I've been in Founders Board for quite some time, kind of newer to Genius Network. And then I've been in different masterminds over time too. Nice. So for people watching this that don't go to conferences or they're thinking about joining a mastermind,

what's your advice to them? Yeah, I would definitely do it because it really allows you to meet like-minded entrepreneurs, like-minded people, connect and network, and really just get to know other people that are like us. A lot of people, they're not wired the same way. That's an understatement for sure. Exactly. We're building something big and exciting. Yeah. And a lot of people just aren't kind of like hardwired that way. And what we want to do is we really want to go out and, you know, connect with other people

that are doing similar things. You got to find your tribe of people. And I think that I've just gained so much from being a part of great masterminds and getting to know great people. And it's in all areas, right? So, you know, obviously on the business side, there's a lot of benefits there, but there's also friendships and connections and, you know, also, you know, going to these conferences, there's times to have, you know, fun, there's times to connect with people, there's times to, you know, make business deals. It's just all there. And so it's almost like the perfect entrepreneur workcation is events.

I love it. Because it's really a workcation. You go to the event. You get to meet people. You network. You have a fun time. Usually there's some kind of activities, things like that. And there's also a business purpose too because you're making connections

that can really last a long time and do well for your business, their business, create win-wins. Yeah. All of that, I agree with so much, dude. Masterminds have really changed my life. I have friends that I met like six years ago in masterminds that I still talk to daily. What age were you when you realized you thought differently than other people? For me, it was actually late because I was trying to fit in with people in high school. So I didn't realize till late, but what about you?

So I remember the exact moment was I was in, this was my sophomore year of high school and I had my YouTube channel and I had just crossed over a hundred thousand subscribers. And, and I was actually making, you know, I was making money from that. I'd originally had applied to the partnership program multiple times. And then I got in and that was back when you had to like apply for it. And I remember, you know, I was making money from the channel and I was showing a friend in one of my classes that, you know, the money I was making, I was making like 60,000 a year and it's like over 5,000 a month.

And so, well, and I didn't really fully even like, you know, and even though I came from like, you know, middle class, you know, background, I didn't really have even like you know and even though i came from like uh you know middle class you know background i i didn't really have a concept of exactly like what that money was because i also was taught like just to save so i wasn't like spending a lot of it other than maybe some equipment or like new camera or whatever i was like putting it in this you know savings account later on you know learn to invest and everything but um but i had that and i remember the teacher came over and he's like oh what do you like, oh, what are you looking at? And I said, oh, I'm just showing what I'm making on YouTube. And he looks at it, and he's like, that's not real.

That can't be. And I'm like, what do you mean? He's like, this is saying it's $60,000. And I'm like, yeah, that's what i made you know like on on youtube last year and uh and and his face like turns white and it's like that's that's more than i make no way flexed on him real quick that was yeah that was the eye opening eye opening moment wow for me yeah you you really don't know when you're not around people doing what you're doing yeah you know because you're just you're just in your zone i guess i don't know yeah yeah but i realized i was holding myself back i don't know

if it was intentionally but yeah i wasn't really fully expressing myself in like middle school high school yeah yeah i don't know if it's because of bullies or something but yeah i'm glad to see you were doing what you were doing yeah young age yeah yeah i was and i i had some of that as well and i think that part of it is i was focused on like you know building up the the channel and things like that and i had also you know had like you know gotten uh you know bullied and stuff at a certain point but uh i think that like it's just you know at one point you realize like this is just the path i'm meant to be on and i'm going to be different and that's also why it's so amazing to find like-minded people and join a mastermind and join a community.

And I also think like talking to anybody who's like also young entrepreneurs too, I joined my first mastermind when I was 19. Wow. So that was like the first and it was a high ticket investment. I was like, I remember the person on the other end of the line and I had money I was building up from the YouTube channel. So I want to clarify that. But at the same time, it I had money I was building up from the YouTube channel, so I want to clarify that. But at the same time, it was the most I had invested in something other than college, right? And the person on the other end of the line is like,

you do this, it's going to change your life. You're going to be around people that are going to push you. And I made the investment, and it really did. And it changed my life by being able to be around those types of people in that mastermind, see what was possible. That's also how I made the pivot from apps to working with a lot of expert-based businesses, coaches, consultants.

A lot of those people were in that mastermind. And I was just showing them, oh, here's what I'm doing with YouTube ads. I said, will that work for this? And I'm like, oh, yeah. And so then I start running some YouTube ads. People had webinars. And it was all of a sudden doing way better than all the Facebook ads. And everybody was like, oh, what's going on here? And then I started, you know, and so that's when I

realized that there was that opportunity. And so just you never know what that next opportunity is going to be. And I think that putting yourself in the right room is very key. I love that. We'll end off with this. You mentioned you were a big saver earlier. How did you switch that mindset to investor? Yeah. So that's a really good question. I think that the big thing that I saw switching from saving to investing is looking at how do I want, like what is going to be the best way to actually build something bigger in the future?

It's not necessarily just saving money or putting it away. You want to invest in things because that's going to give you a yield and a return. So there's a certain amount of savings that people should have. But once you get to that certain spot and you have more abundance in your life, then there's an opportunity to invest that to create more in the future. And so investing that into myself, so in the masterminds that I joined, the mentorship, coaching, mindset, personal development, done a lot of investments there.

That's one of the best investments you can make is in yourself. And then the next is in the business. And so the way that I grew 6,000% wasn't just hanging on to all of those dollars. Now, obviously, always looking at, OK, what can I do to making sure you look after your margins and all that stuff, but reinvesting a lot and saying, I'm going to put back in here. I know that I've got a machine. I put a dollar into ads. I get this many dollars out. Let's put more into that. Let's scale that up, right? It's the same example we talked about with AI, right? It's like, what kind of mindset do you have? Do you have a mindset that's going to say,

okay, I'm going to use AI to kind of, you know, have less inputs to get the same output? Or am I going to use AI to have the same level of input to get more outputs? And I think that's the way to look at it is how can you invest to then go and create more and really look at investing yourself first, then invest in your business,

and then also invest in assets and other things that are going to grow. And I'm grateful and lucky to be able to invest in all of those. I love that. Alaric, where can people find you and your programs and everything? Yeah, so you can find me on all the major social media platforms, Alaric Heck.

I got a YouTube channel here as well, provide a lot of value. I also have a free gift for everybody that is watching. If you're interested in YouTube ads, you can go to adoutreach.com slash gift. That's A-D-O-U-T-R-E-A-C-H dot com slash gift. You're going to be able to get my YouTube ad strategy PDF that'll walk you through step by step

as well as a training and opportunity to talk with our team to see if we can help you with YouTube ads for your business. All right, we'll link it in the video. Thanks for coming on, man. Thank you so much. Thanks for watching, guys.

And I'll see you tomorrow.